Iroline invited us with my friend Clara, to a Sunday traditional Damara lunch at her parents’ house located in a Walvis Bay ghetto area.

On the menu there was the following:
• Bread making (flour, yeast, sugar, salt, water)
• 2 goats’ head, feet and offal (lungs, trachea, etc.).
• Pap: It is a kind of porridge, made from maize meal, served in many homes, as it is cheap and filling.
• Liver salad with onion and tomatoes
• Frozen vegetables

For the occasion, it was very nice as the women wore their traditional dresses.

Iroline with the goat’s head

Ingredients for making bread: flour, yeast, sugar, salt and then adding water.

Set up preparation. 1 pot with the offal such as lungs, trachea, etc., and then Esther was talking about the bread. They are cooking the bread in that big caldron lined with a bit of oil. With the dough, they made little balls, so that it is easier afterward to break the bread into separate pieces…one traditional way of removing the goat’s head hair is to burn it on the fire, to peel off the skin although normally they would boil it… Clara who is from Zimbabwe is also intrigued by how they make the pap here in Namibia.

Goat cooking and adding water sometimes they drink the sauce as a soup.

With the rest of the dough that they flatten and cook under the coal…you need to turn it very frequently, it rises and you just eat it.

Make Pap step 1. Ingredients: boiling water with salt, adding 2 tins of corn, maize flour, a bit of oil. Iroline said that instead of corn they also do it with milk instead.

Pap step 2. A closer look. It cooks in a few minutes.

Goat finishing to cook and then being kept warm on the stove top.

Liver salad. Liver shopped finely, presumably adding salt then Flexida cooks it in oil, add a chopped onion and tomato, let it cool, then she adds white pepper and mayonnaise.

Iroline explains with her sister Divine, that they have designed aprons made for special occasions. Like if they are invited out and want to help they would bring it along to the function Sometimes they even have the inscription like wedding sewn on it.

In the meantime the bread is cooking.

Food assembly

Beautiful Claudia, one of Iroline’s daughers.

Iroline proudly holding the plates, and Clara with the food on her lap.

Hand wash before eating.

Clara eats with her fingers, natural fork.

Just before our farewell to the family.

I hope you have also enjoyed this journey with us.

I wish you a wonderful European summer and will probably resume the blog in October.

Until then, keep well and happy.

Kind regards.

Murielle

Hello everybody

Today we are going to speak about an unusual subject: death, which is also part of our life cycle.

Ester, who is Iroline’s sister, gives us on overview of the Damara tribe funeral tradition.

Most people take funeral insurance. It is not just in Namibia, Ester said in the whole of Africa. Especially from middle to lower income people. Many people take family funeral insurance for their parents, brothers, sisters, aunties…It is common practice.
Depending on the tradition/tribe, they will bury the deceased within a week. For the Damara tribe, to which Ester belongs, it can take up to 2 weeks’ mourning period between when the person dies and the funeral ceremony. In general, the funeral ceremony is on Saturdays.

During the mourning period, the family gets together, the neighbours come, they sing, etc.

And then, the day before, on Friday, they bring the casket of their beloved back home, in the living room, they open the casket so that people can view the body, if they wish, until the funeral day. They all sleep in the house. Ester said that sometimes they also have old people sleeping next to the casket, while it is opened. In the Damara tradition, it is a way to show their last respect to the deceased person.

With Iroline, as we were driving through the Shanty town, she pointed out the house with the black flag with a white cross, which indicates that there has been a recent death in the family.
The flag indicates to show respect and to keep quiet in the area close to the house.

Iroline told me that if the flag were white with a black cross, it means that there is a wedding in the family.

Thereafter, we briefly visited the cemetery in the shanty town of Kuisebmond.

Iroline said that it may be a picture of a freshly buried person.
Mostly, afterwards, the body is placed in a tomb.
Depending on the funeral insurance payment and design for the tomb, it may even take a couple of years before transferring the remains of the person into the tomb.

I was quite surprised when I saw some atypical tombs…Like Paulus Felitas may have had a car business, and Engelbrecht Benedick presumably was working or had his own truck company.

As you can see from these few tombs, people die quite young. Looking at the statistics, life expectancy in Namibia in 2021 was 62 years’ old for women and 55 years’ old for men.

But, surprisingly, apparently, the average life expectancy in the Himba community is 80-85 years, and some members of the tribe live up to 100 years ‘old.

Have a nice evening.
Until next time.
Kind regards
Murielle

As I am currently not travelling in Namibia, I am glad that I came up with a new idea for our blog. We will be doing a new series, with Iroline.

Very often, we live in our bubble without appreciating how other people live.

Around Walvis Bay, there are 2 shanty towns: Naraville and Kuisebmond.

Iroline, who used to work for us, lives in Kuisebmond.

Iroline kindly accepted the challenge to take me to her home, to her parents’ place and to introduce me to all her family.

So for today, we drive through Kuisebmond and visit Iroline’s home, her parents’ home and we meet Iroline’s family.

In the video Iroline talks about her father being a striked fisherman. To start with I did not understand what Iroline meant, but in December 2019, there was the Fishrot scandal in Namibia where 6 prominent politicians and businessmen (Fishrot Six) were arrested as they were accused of running schemes to get control of valuable fish quotas. The allegations are that the Six acquired about 8 million euros in bribes from an Icelandic fishing company. The Six politicians and businessmen are still in jail, awaiting trial.

After the scandal, Iroline’s father, was out of work as his fishing factory closed down. The fishermen got together and went on strike. Today, I understand that the Namibian government is addressing the situation of fishing quotas and the striked fishermen are now being allocated work in new and existing fisheries.

In Namibia, there is no unemployment benefit and her father Peter survived economically by the financial support of his family.

It happens very often in Namibia where a few working members of the family share their income with the family who cannot work.

The street where Iroline lives.

Iroline is giving us a tour of her shack and introduces us to her daughter Shirley.

Her main bedroom. Iroline explains that her boyfriend who stays with them was retrenched and is now doing the odd jobs in Kuisebmond, doing plumbing, welding, brick work for building houses. He was not at home during my visit.

Iroline has 3 daughters. In the master bed , Iroline and her boyfriend sleep with their 2 years old baby daughter Toska. The other 2 daughters (Shirley and Claudia) sleep in the single bed, head to toe, and the toilets are outside.

Driving in the location. Generally there is the main house, and behind the owners’house they have a ghetto that they rent out.

Arriving at the family house where her Mom and Dad stay. I apologise about the rotating camera. The Chef is Cedric, Iroline’s brother, cooking a fish head, presumably to make soup. They dry the fish on newspaper first to absorb the moisture before putting flour and frying it in oil.

Iroline’s mother name is Flexida. Flexida was saying that she prefers to take a picture indoors as with the colour of her skin, with the sun, the picture would not come out nice, outside.

Flexida has 4 children. 2 daughters Iroline, Divine and 2 sons, 1 being the Chef on the video Cedric and another son working at sea. Ester is an adopted daughter from Flexida’s sister who passed away and she was raised and part of the family since she was little.

Ester with her new born baby boy, Yeshua, who is 2 months old and Iroline’s daughter Shirley.

Iroline’s father Peter, who is holding his grandchiledren, Toska and Zoe.

Picture of Iroline’s parents Peter and Felixa.

Iroline with her 3 children Claudia, Shirley and the 2 years’ old daughter Toska.

Family picture. Starting with Iroline and the front row… Iroline, Ester, Toska, Felixa, New Born son of Ester , Zoe, Vasco (son of Ester), Cedric, Claudia, Shirley, Alicia, Divine (Felixia’s daughter) with her boyfriend Revaldo.

Next time, with Iroline, we will be talking about African women’s hair.

Goeie nag (Bonne nuit/Good night in Afrikaans).
Murielle

As an introduction, for me, Namibia is blessed by pure natural beauty, space and freedom, and the kindness, humility, and playful nature of its people.

It is the second least populated country in the world (after Mongolia) and, at the same time, Namibia is an incredible melting pot of people from different cultural backgrounds and tribes.

The majority tribe is Ovambo, other ethnic groups are mostly Kavango, Damara, Herero, White, Nama, Caprivian, San, Basters. Namibia is also the land of pioneers, explorers, entrepreneurs, and artists.

Namibia ranks as the 3rd wealthiest country in Africa per capita but also as the second most wealth inequality in the world.

This inequality is a little bit mitigated by tribal subsistence farming in communal land.

As Namibia is in a phase of exponential growth, expected to grow by 60% by 2032, from Oil & Gas, Green Hydrogen and renewable energy, there is great hope that, with a low population of 2.6m people, directly or indirectly, everybody should benefit.

In this context of great cultural diversity, which I find particularly fascinating, I thought it would nice and educational for me (and perhaps for you too), to better understand and appreciate the life of some local people in Namibia. So, here we start:

In Walvis Bay, we live in an apartment and Nikodemus is the gentleman who looks after the outside maintenance of our residence.

Around a cup of tea, Niko generously agreed to tell me about his childhood, education, his work at the farm, getting married, his move to the city and his life today.

CHAPTER 1: NIKODEMUS’ CHILDHOOD

On the 6th of June 1981, Nikodemus Swartbooi was born. (hereafter referred as Niko).

His parents chose his name Nicodemus from the esteemed rabbi in the bible.

As a matter of interest, 80% of Namibians are Christian (mostly Lutherans, which is a branch of Protestantism, and Catholics), and 20% follow Animism.

In most tribes, if you get married, you carry the husband’s surname but interestingly, if you have children together, the children usually carry the mother’s surname.

So, Niko’s surname Swartbooi, comes from his mother’s side and it means black boy.

Also, as soon as you are born, you get a nickname.

Niko’s nickname is “Oukrop” meaning the part of the dove’s throat which stores food to feed the babies (the crop). I interpret it as being the provider of the family.

When Niko grew up, he was very good at playing volleyball and soccer and was nicknamed Tiger by his school friends.

So now, most of his family and friends call him Tiger, which he likes.

Niko’s Mum, Helena, was born from 2 different but similar tribes, the Damara and Nama tribes.
She was a nurse and is now retired.

His father was born from the Herero tribe and died shortly after Niko’s birth. They had 2 children.
When Niko was 3 years’ old, his mother married Paul, and they had 4 children together.

Niko’s stepfather Paul, and his mother Helena

Niko’s stepfather, Paul, is from Deutsch descendant and is a coloured person.
Coloured means of various ancestry, including indigenous (Khoisan, Bantu and others), Whites (including Afrikaners), Indian, Malay…

Jeremia was Niko’s grandfather; he had a farm and was a garbage truck driver at Maltahohe village council from 1985 to 2000. Jeremia then retired and died in 2009 at the age of 68, which is quite an old age in Namibia, as life expectancy is around 62.

Niko spent most of his childhood and education in Maltahohe, a town in Southern Central Namibia of about 6000 inhabitants.

At school, Niko graduated to grade 12 and received his high school diploma.

In Namibia, this is a high level of education and equivalent to a year before A levels in the UK, and la terminale in France.

Local Namibians are very talented with languages and amazingly, Niko speaks Nama, Damara, English, Afrikaans, Baxa taw is sit id (English/Afrikaans in reverse).

To finish our first chapter, here is a little recording of Niko, speaking Damara.

Have a nice evening
Kind regards
Murielle